Today Sam Antar works as a forensic accountant for law firms, corporations, hedge funds and others. Herb Greenberg, the managing partner with Pacific Square Research, said in a tweet Sunday that Eddie Antar's death marked "the end of an era.
End of an era: Crazy Eddie ex-employee pages buzzing about the death of Eddie Antar. Crazy Eddie's most 'insane' commercials. CNNMoney Sponsors. Capitalizing on the rise of VCRs and other consumer electronics, he expanded throughout the New York metropolitan area, eventually dominating the market by selling large quantities at thin profits. At its height, the company had forty-three stores in the Northeast and boasted annual sales of more than three hundred and fifty million dollars.
By the mid-eighties, Antar, like Donald Trump, had forged a reputation for dealmaking. The company went public in , at eight dollars a share, and then things fell apart spectacularly. Federal prosecutors investigated him for manipulating stocks. His first wife, claiming she had been defrauded in their divorce case, served him papers while he was at a bar mitzvah at the Waldorf Astoria. That exacerbated a family feud that split the Antar family into rival camps, including his many relatives who had high positions in the company.
Meanwhile, the S. He also funnelled money through Panama, fooling analysts into thinking that the company was booming when in fact it was suffering huge losses. He obtained Israeli citizenship under the name Alexander Stewart, a phony U. The chain went bankrupt in and closed its stores. Number one is the family started squabbling because there were a lot of internal rivalries.
Eddie had thrown his father and his brothers out of the business. Eddie had another problem: He had a wife named Debbie and a mistress named Debbie, and they both spoke French and they were both blonde.
For two years I was fighting with the feds and not turning against my family. But by , Eddie was distancing himself from me, and I was concerned that I was going to be left holding the bag because Eddie was moving most of his assets overseas. So in March of I made a deal and I started negotiating with the feds. Now, when they first investigated the Crazy Eddie fraud, they only knew the securities fraud—from to when we were inflating the income.
I added a whole new dimension to the case. And the feds were fascinated by this young guy who knows all of these sophisticated financial crimes. And they took a liking to me. So of course, I ended working with the feds, and eventually Eddie got prosecuted and went to jail.
They took me under their wing. I was like an orphaned child from the Antar family. It transcended into a long-term relationship. They started recommended me for work. It helped put me on the right track. How did the movie happen? Around , Eddie was going to make a movie with Danny DeVito.
Unfortunately, Eddie was trying to make a movie that was going to glamorize him and minimize the crimes. It fell apart, but several years later I ran into the screenwriter, Peter Steinfeld, on Twitter when he posted something about doing research on the Crazy Eddie movie.
We started talking about it, and I told him the whole Crazy Eddie story and he was fascinated. Yes, but after he passed away, all of a sudden there was more interest in doing the movie. I was a cold-blooded crook. Reviewing the script. And I provided a lot of documentation to back up the movie. But the fictionalization will be consistent with the truth.
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